Slay The Spirits Abyss: in which a ghost tries to woo me across the void.
A chilling account of the haunting of Dunskey Castle and a sexual proposition across the void between worlds.
Friday, February 27th, 2026 - Dunskey Castle, Portpatrick
Dunskey Castle hunched on the cliff top with such presence and energy that it almost looked like it could be a living thing; like a bat about to take flight. Awestruck and chilled by a seaside wind that sliced clean through the jumper I’d stolen from my fiancé’s best mate, I was transfixed not just by the castle, but by the stunning coastal scenery. Far below the rocky cliff that hosted the ruin we were about to explore in search of ghosts and spirits and all other associated phantasmata, the bottomless black of the sea heaved and swelled. Across that liminal expanse of water the lights of Ireland glittered, and in bursts and flashes a lighthouse winked in and out of sight further along the coast.
We cut through the shifting darkness of the night in a giggling girlish processional, excitement the top-note of our vibe, but with an undertow of base dread at what we might encounter inside the castle’s walls.
Devine Tension led us onward. Resplendent in scarlet, not merely in the fabric of her suit nor the burnished auburn silk of her hair, but, more curiously still, in the very skin of her face and body, painted crimson in homage to something infernal and hell-sent. She looked every inch the fearsome commander of a legion dispatched directly from the underworld, chivvying us toward the castle with a presence as capable of holding the ruin’s attention as it was of spellbinding the nightclub crowds she more usually performs for. Devine possesses the indefatigable high-camp energy of somebody who once opened for Chappell Roan and, quite correctly, refuses to allow the world to forget it. She orchestrated proceedings with supernatural precision and a watchful intensity which, coupled with the body paint, gave her the alarming appearance of the red-faced demon from Insidious patiently overseeing a particularly glamorous séance.
Following on was Jo, Madame Jo Mama to give her the resplendence of her Sunday name. If Devine was the commander of a hellish legion, then Jo was her lieutenant. Her face, as ever, beaten to the gods and giving the crisp excellence and freezing intensity so synonymous with her brand; but somehow in her lack of trying with her outfit choice, she managed to register the most sinister presence of the evening by capturing two terrifying aesthetics. The first, the unedifying spectre of a medieval friar, achieved by the pointed hood of a navy windbreaker selected to stave off the Portpatrick chill; the second, rather more alarmingly, the unmistakable energy of Queen Camilla achieved with slack-pants stuffed haphazardly into wellington-boots.
Camille Toe came next. Camille, touched by something spiritual, carried herself with the immense confidence of a woman preparing herself to negotiate with the dead, which made her appearance all the more extraordinary. She was dressed less like a paranormal investigator than the front desk receptionist of a provincial insurance firm still operating on a computer system last updated under Thatcher. Stranger Things, I reflected, referred not merely to the Netflix programme but also to the wardrobe instincts of our beloved sister witch Camille, who seems to vibrate permanently within a dimension where rolodexes are cutting-edge technology. Her bushel of aqua-coloured hair whipped violently in the sea wind, lending her the alarming presence of some ancient Celtic spectre glimpsed through sea haar on a bleak coast; a wonderful contradiction to her fundamentally “aunty-like” energy.
These three imposing women* are the veterans of our company, who have completed a season of spirit hunting before. Joyful to be in their company, myself and one other new arrival fell into step.
The other new face is Kirsty, a seasoned explorer of ruins and abandoned places of “Whispering Walls” fame. Dressed the part in a leather jacket and boots, Kirsty strode through the salt-stiffened grass with purpose and the conviction of a person who knew exactly what to do with all the associated machinery of spiritual communion we had brought along with us in a bag-for-life. Her presence recalled in me the fearsome and commanding aura of the many events managers I have had the pleasure of working with, and I could tell her frankness of approach would be a grounding influence on all endeavours to come. She also carried the distinct air of someone with an understanding of and respect for the deep history and heritage of the places she explores, Dunskey no less and no more than any other castle on her portfolio of haunted properties.
I struck rather a different impression, tramping through the grass with the giddy wonder of someone simply delighted to have been invited. My earrings (selected carefully to complement the stolen jumper and thereby lessen the moral severity of the crime) glinted under the torchlight, and my limbs shook equally from excitement at the supernatural hijinks to come and the biting chill of a west coast night. I sensed immediately that my role within proceedings would prove distinctly Daphne Blake-coded, specifically in the Sarah Michelle Gellar tradition: framed initially as decorative comic relief before being granted the mercy of both genuine capability and a devastating roundhouse kick. The latter, I should note, was once demonstrated to spectacular effect upon a plumber who let himself into my Aberdeen flat unannounced and encountered me unexpectedly on the private inside stairwell, shopping tote in hand and en route to Sainsbury’s.
We entered the crumbling fortress with wonderment and reverence for the energy of the space, electing straight away to head into the complex of lower floors accessible to the immediate left of the imposing castle gate. The air at Dunskey is never still, but in this more sheltered space the biting wind was held back at last. A smell of wet stone and damp earth clung to everything, and torchlight bounced off the grey stone walls as we illuminated cells and grottos of various sizes. Outside, the hiss and rumble of the sea continued steadily and rhythmically. This brought me an inexplicable comfort, as if the constant movement and reminder of the salt water pooling forty feet beneath us created some layer of protection from the more malevolent spectres and ghouls we may otherwise encounter.
We began the ritual of proceedings and the first communications coming through Ghost Tube: the number thirty-five, references to a spirit in its fifties, and with the focused attention of somebody chairing a meeting that has finally come to an interesting agenda item, Devine led the questioning with the assembled tech while the rest of us peered into the dark corners where shadows gathered as thick as fabric drapes. I didn’t quite feel any strong presence at this point, save for something that seemed to be standing to the side, hesitant but curious, not quite engaging.
Exhausting our conversation in these rooms, we set off to explore the complex of rooms to the right of the castle gates. Not a second after we crossed the threshold of the small, claustrophobic room at the far side, I was seized by a violent and predatory nausea. The miasmic smell that stuck thick in the air of that room was the smell of death; not the sick rot of corpses or the scent of death that triggers a flight instinct, but instead the funereal grave dirt smell of wet earth, of rotted vegetation, and of years of accumulated detritus and debris of all horrific kinds deposited by pigeons and sea birds. The cloying smell made me gag and I excused myself to be violently sick in the castle courtyard.
Once I had recovered, we returned to the cellar level complex, where Madame Jo was compelled to enter the Estes method for the first time: a practice that requires a person to act as a channel for the spirits by entering sensory deprivation by way of a blindfold and noise-cancelling headphones. The headphones are connected to a spirit box which scans frequencies, and words surface through the noise like looming things from the deep, the wearer repeating them back to the group as best they can. The group pose questions, and the words come back from the spirit world in a facsimile of reply.
Jo entered Estes. The headphones went on. The blindfold went on. The group went quiet.
After a short interlude of partly sensible converse, in Jo’s voice stripped of its usual sardonic editorial control and instead infused with a deeply rural Scottish accent, eventually came the words “faggot” and “gay boys”. Once I had sufficiently rebuked the offending spirit for invoking the F slur during the hallowed month of February, Jo announced that the accents of the voices coming through had switched from deeply Scottish to an unmistakable Northern Irish. A chill crept through the group as the gravity of this sank in, all of us remembering Kirsty’s tale of the Irish smuggler prisoners who, likely, would have been detained in these very rooms.
We headed upstairs. The upper levels of Dunskey felt markedly different from the dungeons below: airier, less saturated somehow with psychic residue. In a long gallery room dominated by an enormous window overlooking the sea, Camille immediately became convinced some tragedy had once unfolded, and I was installed on a ledge beside the window, blindfolded.
For several minutes the process yielded little beyond scattered fragments and incoherent murmuring. Then, suddenly and unmistakably, a male voice spoke directly into my ear:
“Ruaridh.”
The accent was Northern Irish. Belfast, perhaps. There was something familiar in the way my name was spoken: teasing, almost affectionate. I repeated it aloud, assuming that pick-me bitch energy and sensory deprivation had joined forces against me. Then it came again. And then, for emphasis and dramatic seasoning, a third time.
Camille informed me afterward that the ribbons of the blindfold had begun behaving strangely behind my head, lifting and twisting against the wind with enough animation to suggest something not only meteorological in nature. I only know that I could feel them moving against the nape of my neck with an intimacy that felt increasingly deliberate. Disappointingly, this portion of the evening is officially designated “lost footage” because somehow the camera had stopped recording during the time Camille was filming me in the session.
Sitting there, blindfolded in the dark, listening to a Belfast voice repeatedly murmur my name into my ear while unseen fingers (or something uncomfortably approximating fingers) seemed to toy with the ribbons behind my head, I began to suspect that something inside Dunskey Castle had taken a rather particular interest in me. Something with “curious DL” energy and the sexual voracity of Kim Petras.
My suspicions, as it transpired, were confirmed downstairs.
When Camille and I rejoined our colleagues in the dungeon, Devine went into the Estes method herself. Not long after, she said my name. Unsettled but vindicated and secure in the knowledge that my experience upstairs was not the result of self-delusion, I was at first merely curious about the interest in me. Until the spirit was asked what the significance of me was, to them, and the following response came via Devine: “Anal.”
Bashful, clocked for a total bottom, and further convinced that the spirit I encountered upstairs was now with us in the dungeon and propositioning me, I felt like my Daphne energy came home to roost. I pictured something not unlike the scene from Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore but considerably less fit for television and with substantially more of the energy one might expect from a burly salt-crusted Irish smuggler of yesteryear, expelling the pent-up energy of a life (and a death, it transpires) lived without being able to openly externalise homosexual sentiment. I made a passable attempt at clutching for my pearls (which I chose not to wear that day as the combination with the gold hoops would be discordant), but internally the smirk of the pick-me bitch fought to be released.
After yet more intelligible and sensible conversing, my name was spoken again, this time in the context of us asking the spirit who in the room they were standing next to. The response came:
“He’s special.”
Thus I stood in the dark of the dungeon of a crumbling castle while a spectral Irishman appeared to woo me through the conduit of a drag queen dressed as a demon in crimson body paint; how utterly charming. And yet beneath the absurdity of the situation, beneath the laughter, the camp theatrics, the repeated psychic reinforcement of me as a bottom before an audience of my peers, there lingered something unexpectedly tender.
Somewhere within that ruin, above the black Atlantic swell and beneath the patient blinking of the lighthouse across the water, there remained the distinct impression of a man who had once lived very fully. I found myself thinking not of some pale gothic phantom drifting tragically through corridors, but of somebody who was once broad-shouldered and wind-battered and alive with appetite. One of those roguish Irish lads history reliably produces in alarming quantities with salt spray in his hair, trouble in his grin, and who was probably engaged in activities expressly prohibited both by the law and by the Presbytery.
I imagined him moving through this landscape centuries earlier with seawater still drying on his clothes, laughing too loudly, flirting recklessly, carrying contraband through hidden coastal routes beneath the same moon hanging above us all tonight. I imagined, too, the particular loneliness of men like that. Men who perhaps spent entire lives translating desire into banter, roughhousing, eye contact held a second too long, and whatever fleeting intimacies could be stolen in the dark.
And I thought about how somewhere in those stone walls, between Scotland and Ireland and the living and the dead and the lighthouse’s patient appearances and disappearances, a man died with the taste of the Atlantic still in his lungs centuries ago, but had seen me across worlds and centuries and it meant something to him for reasons I am not entirely prepared to examine in depth.
By the time we finally left Dunskey Castle the sea was still crashing below us exactly as it must have done during his lifetime. The wind still moved through the ruined halls. Ireland still glittered faintly across the water. And I remember feeling, quite suddenly and with enormous affection, that had circumstances been different, had centuries and mortality and social convention intervened less aggressively, I might have let him kiss me goodbye beside the cliff edge.
Reader, I fear I may have been exactly his type.